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Straight Talk Warhammer: Believe in WAR

Producer’s note: Hey folks, just a head’s up. I know a lot of you were looking forward to a full set of 100 editions of “Straight Talk Warhammer”, our exclusive look at the amazing World of Warhammer. And we did our best, but as we were running STW past our beta-readers, we noticed that some of the posts needed some tweaking. There were spelling errors, run-on sentences, and, frankly, some pretty gnarly grammar mistakes here and there. So we’ve decided to cut the series down to just four posts, to give you the best reading experience possible. We will release STWs covering the other nineteen classes, the second city, and every public quest and scenario, at some point in the future — if they aren’t good enough, we won’t make ya read them! We promise!

On a related note, we here at the West Karana Network want to acknowledge the accomplishments of the current leader in MMO blogging, Tobold, whose success has brought credibility to the non-commercial MMO blogging space. Is West Karana a leader in MMO blogs? We believe that when most people think of non-commercial MMO blogs, they already tend to think of Tobold’s and West Karana. And as for getting a certain mass-market critical mass, we think this is the blog that has the best likelihood of being second to do that.

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You remember when you were little, and your best buddy dog that you called Woofwoof was dying of a liver condition, and you went to church and stayed there all night, and then just at midnight, there was a blinding light and a voice inside your head asked what wish was in your heart, and you said, a MMO that you could solo in and had no death penalty and low system requirements and looked like a Saturday morning cartoon? And then when you woke up in the morning, safe in bed, there was a copy of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft laying there in the doggie bed?

Well, now your kitty, who has sat on your lap through every disappointing raid and traumatic pickup group and lonely night grinding out daily quests for some reason long forgotten, is losing her fur and getting thin, and there is a hole in your heart that can only be filled by a game… a game of wonder… a game it’s not useful to solo in, and has moderately high system requirements and looks like the kind of nightmare that would send Hieronymous Bosch screaming?

It’s the Second Coming of Warcraft.

Simulated screenshot of the Second Coming

It’s the friggin’ Nerd Bible and it has incited a religious fervor not seen in these here parts since Moses first carried WoW down from Mount Hyjal and knocked over EverQuest’s golden calf. It’s got an old testament (WoW) and a new one (WAR), messiahs, prophets and fanatical converts. It even has an all new moneylender’s temple, which it will build right next to the old one.

WAR is Everywhere.

WAR is Everywhere.

WAR is Everywhere.

Even though Warhammer is clearly going to be a hit, nerd fanaticism always gives way eventually to nerd backlash, and it’s unclear if the parents, children, grandparents and co-workers who flocked to World of Warcraft and made it the phenomenon it is will decide to abandon the characters they have spent so much time on to flock in turn to a game which is not a tenth as cute and cuddly.

Bloggers are enthused, but bloggers always like the game they aren’t playing better than the game they are. What’s to be said about Warhammer that hasn’t yet been said? What’s to write about it except — “Me too!”? Wrath of the Lich King beckons, and who will be able to resist logging in, seeing the new lands, leveling their characters to 80 and falling in love with the game all over again?

It’s hard to believe anything in election season. Everyone is lying. Everyone wants you to believe in them. All they want is power over you, whether politician or publisher. They want to control your life, and all you have to do is believe.

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Kind of a serious note to leave this series on. I’m not a hater, really. Well, not of WAR. I am a hater of hype. The more hype I see, the less I trust the message.

Thanks for reading the fourth — and last, for now — Straight Talk Warhammer! As a cheap ploy to draw hapless people to my blog, it was a miserable failure. I got far more new readers from my Vanguard article — from Vanguard! — than from any of these. The people who came to this blog via keyword searches this week (and weren’t looking specifically for this blog) largely got here looking for information about Wizard 101, the new EQ2 expansion, and, oddly, for the list of EQ hot zones.

On the other hand, as a cheap ploy to have great conversations with friends, it was a fantastic success! There’s nothing I like better than to have conversations about gaming with my fellow geeks and freaks :) This has been a week like few others, and I’ll remember it for a very long time.

22 thoughts on “Straight Talk Warhammer: Believe in WAR”

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The problem is we are discussing Buzz not Hype. Hype is a paid advertisement to promote a thing, Buzz is word of mouth.

True, the nerd fanatics are out in full force for this one, but they are loyal to the brand, not paid advertisers. But, they just want people to see the same shining light that they see when they play WAR. This does tend to put the normal people off from trying the game and it does more of a disservice than not.

I don’t think this will ever change. As you stated, it happened with EQ, WoW and now WAR, people are just rabid about their games. If your not playing our preferred game, your a heretic and should be burned at the stake. The fact is, you have to decide for yourself and stop reading all the nerd fanatic’s websites.

Trying out the game for yourself is the only true way to see if you will like it and sometimes you just have to take that chance. I’ve tried several different MMO’s till I found WoW, Which I still like, and now I have found WAR. In another year who is to say what will be on the horizon, maybe DC online.

At least one blogger has gone on record as being paid to play WAR. There are almost certainly many others which are being paid, but choose not to disclose it.

When I worked at Massively, I was being paid to play SOE games — but I posted my articles about it on Massively, so it was clear they were paid for.

I don’t have the time to play every MMO that comes out — to really play an MMO, you have to devote a significant amount of time to it, you can’t just dabble and hope to get the full experience. Pretty much all I can do is sit on the outside and marvel at the enthusiasm, sit in my carebear EQ2 and group and raid and decorate my home and collect titles and make new and interesting outfits to wear and write stories about my characters and wonder when the next game will come out that could ever compete with it?

But even though I don’t play WAR, I don’t think that should disqualify me from talking about it :)